Duncan Hallas (23 December 1925 – 19 September 2002), was a prominent member of theTrotskyist movement and a leading member of theSocialist Workers Party in Great Britain.
Born into a working-class family inManchester, Duncan Hallas joined theYoung Communist League at the age of 14 in 1939 but soon became disillusioned owing to theMolotov–Ribbentrop Pact.[1] In 1940, he met a woman sellingSocialist Appeal at an Engineering Apprentices College where he was on day release and he joined the TrotskyistWorkers International League in 1940[2] and then its successor organisation theRevolutionary Communist Party while still a young worker during the Second World War. Conscripted into theFirst Lancashire Regiment in 1943, he served in France, Belgium and Germany and he was also involved in themutiny in Egypt after the end of the war, earning him three months in military prison.[2] When factional disputes broke out in The Club (the name adopted by BritishTrotskyists after entering theLabour Party) Hallas became a supporter ofTony Cliff's positions.
Hallas was a founder member of the tinySocialist Review Group when it was organised in 1951 and wrote its only major founding document not authored by Cliff, "On the Stalinist Parties".[3] He also wrote a number of articles for the early issues ofSocialist Review. After his job took him to Scotland in 1954/55 he effectively dropped out of the group, although he remained politically active in theNational Union of Teachers and elsewhere.
With the upsurge in left-wing political activity in 1968 Hallas joined theInternational Socialists (IS) and rapidly became a member of the group's leadership and a full-time worker at its headquarters. However, Hallas, along with some other leading members, became concerned about Tony Cliff's increasing tendency to take decisions without consulting leadership bodies. Hallas initiated an oppositional group alongside John Palmer andJim Higgins. However, when this oppositional group became a formal faction, theInternational Socialist Opposition (ISO), Hallas broke with it. He remained within the IS when the ISO's members were expelled, becoming a leading figure in its successor organisation, theSocialist Workers Party, until his retirement from active politics, owing to ill health, in 1995.
Hallas was the author of many articles for the publications of the IS/SWP group and of a short guide to the politics ofLeon Trotsky.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| People | |
| Other | |
